Professional Architect and photographer, he always felt a great passion for the Sea together with a deep connection with Nature.
He is the President of and Association called Bollate Sub, a non-profit club working since 1976 on the teaching side of underwater activities, to spread the love and the knowledge of this kind of disciplines.

He is, of course, involved in didactic activities:

He is a two-star CMAS diving instructor, TSA Air Instructor Trainer and three-star CMAS Underwater Photography Instructor (first of the only two three-star level licenses issued in Italy).
He is also TSA Marine Biology Instructor and DAN BLS and Oxygen Provider Instructor.
Year since he is besides dealing with Deep and Technical diving within Trimix Scuba Association Europe as Nitrox Instructor Trainer, Deep Air Trainer and 95mt Trimix Trainer.

During his activity as and Underwater Photographer, he obtained several important international rewards.

• In 1987 he obtained the “GRAND PRIZE NIKON PHOTO CONTEST INTERNATIONAL” for an Underwater picture.
   

• In 1991, during Antibes World Underwater Picture Festival, he reached the “PRIX MONDIAL DU LIVRE D’IMAGE SOUS MARINE” for his book titled “SOGNI DI LUCE”.
   

• During year 2004 two important international rewards have been appointed to his book titled “IL TEMPO DELLA LUCE”: 
  > Orvieto (Italy) – Orvieto Photography Award 2004 – VI Edition – FIRST PRIZE FOR PHOTOGRAPHIC BOOK in the “Naturalistic Image” CATEGORY.
  > Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia) - Celebrate the Sea – Underwater Imagery Festival 2004 – BEST BOOK OF FESTIVAL.

His pictures appear on several books about the sea: Wrecks, diving through history – XX Century Prehistoric Animals – The Red Sea – The Red Sea Diving Guide – The Red Sea Underwater Paradise – Wrecks of the Red Sea – Guide to the Exploration of the Sinai – The Maldives Underwater Paradise – The Coral Reef.

SEA IS LIFE, a book advertised by the COUNCIL OF EUROPE in 1995, during the European Nature Conservation Year and published under the patronage of the PRESIDENCY OF THE COUNCIL OF MINISTERS.

Some of Claudio’s pictures also appear within the book “Tropical Emotions – sea wonders narrated by an underwater naturalist” – by Luciano Bernardo, published by Nardini Editore during February 2009.

He also published, together with some other underwater photography instructors, the didactic manual “Underwater Photography Sketchbook”.

He contributed to review TSA Trimix Scuba Association Technical and Trimix brand new didactic handbooks.
For many years he have worked with several underwater photography magazines (particularly with the two known as Sub and Fotosub), for whom has realized a large number of article. As a statement to the contribution Claudio has given, through the years, to the spread and to the teaching of Underwater Photography, during the year 2005, his Biography has been included within Dr. Alberto Romero’s book titled “Tales & Stories upon ITALIAN UNDERWATER PHOTO-CINEMATOGRAPHY”, part of the “PIONEER” collection, published by IRECO.

Claudio Ziraldo is considered a long-and-great experienced Author: his pictures range from great underwater landscapes images, taken with super-wide optical lenses, to portraits of some of the smallest inhabitants of the sea; Nature, together with the purity of lights and colours, is the subject that more often falls in the viewfinder of his camera.

Claudio has dipped almost in all the Oceans and Seas of the World, but he has got a particular fondness for the Red Sea and its amazing bottoms, bottoms that he knows very well and attend by more than twenty-five years… the Ancient Romans used to call the Mediterranean Sea “Mare Nostrum” (which means “our sea”), and exactly like them, Claudio considers the Red Sea, “his sea” in a sense, since it is the place where he has grown up as a diver and as a photographer and where his son, Alessandro, has learned to dive under the guidance of the “great” Gigi Ferrari. 

The deep connection he has with this Sea, has been permanently ratified in 1991, when, while exploring the waters of the South of Egypt in search for new dive sites, in collaboration with the Tour Operator La Compagnia del Mar Rosso, he identified a reef, which now it is one of the most famous and beautiful reef of the Red Sea, worldwide known as SHA’AB CLAUDIO.

Nowadays Claudio frequents the “magical” South-East Asian dive sites, in search of rare and often unknown life forms.
For many years now, his son Alessandro is an irreplaceable buddy for Claudio, both during recreational and technical diving; he is also an indispensable collaborator in photographic activities and together have experienced many adventures in the crystal clear waters of the further away seas, in the depths of the Mare Nostrum and…in the dark and deep waters of the subalpine lakes.

During the last years, they have made many explorative dives, using Trimix, within the Northern Italian Lakes, especially Lake Como, where they took part together with the TSA Founder Claudio Corti and other TSA instructors, in a research campaign on the unsolved “Mysteries” of the Mussolini’s Column. The report of this research has been published in June 2007, within the magazine “Sub”, in an article signed by Guido Pfeiffer, Flori Calò and Claudio Corti, entitled “DONGO, LE ARMI DEL DUCE” (“Dongo, the Duce’s weapons”).

The deep knowledge of the most advanced diving techniques, the passion for the under water world and for its inhabitants and a never-ending research in the field of underwater photography, put Claudio Ziraldo among the most qualified scholars of these fascinating activities.
 

Alessandro and Claudio Ziraldo